Concealed Influence of Custom: Hume's Treatise from the Inside Out

321 Pages·2019·18.779 MB·English

by  Jay L. Garfield

The Concealed Influence of Custom

The Concealed Influence
of Custom
Hume’s Treatise from the Inside Out
v v
w
Jay L. Garfield
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To the memory of Annette C. Baier
Who taught us how to read Hume
Such is the influence of custom, that, where it is strongest, it not only covers our nat-
ural ignorance, but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place, merely because it is
found in the highest degree. (EHU 4.24; SBN 28–2 9)
CONTENTS
Preface ix
PART I. Methodological Preliminaries
1. Introduction: Principles of Interpretation 3
2. Why the Treatise? Why Book II? Why Custom? 28
PART II. Book II: The Psychological Foundations
3. The Passions: Some Basic Distinctions 49
4. The Passions and Human Nature 71
5. Hume’s Moral Psychology 90
PART III. Books I and III: The Skeptical Framework Deployed
6. Epistemological Foundations 105
7. Causality 128
8. Skepticism with Regard to Reason 152
9. Of Skepticism with Regard to the Senses 172
10. Personal Identity and Philosophical Method 203
11. Ethics 225
PART IV. Living Carelessly
12. The Appendix: Second Thoughts about Second Thoughts 263
13. Persons as Customary Creatures 273
References 281
Index 289
( vii )

PREFACE
In 1972, the late Norman S. Care assigned me to read parts of the Treatise
in my first philosophy class, in my first semester of college (a class I took by
accident). After reading Hume’s discussion of personal identity, I declared
a philosophy major. I am sure that I am not alone in having been lured into
the study of philosophy by Hume. I have never stopped thinking about the
Treatise, and this book is the distant effect of Norman Care’s teaching, but,
like any effect, it has many causes and conditions. My interest in Hume was
sustained as an undergraduate by an Oberlin colloquium on Hume. On that
occasion, two eminent Hume scholars were extraordinarily generous and
indulgent to a naive and probably overenthusiastic undergraduate. I still
remember talking at length with Terence Penelhum about the structure of
Hume’s ethics and the role of an ideal observer, and with Lewis White Beck
about the degree to which Kant really diverged from Hume on causality.
Neither of these giants of Hume scholarship had any obligation to talk to
me, and I am very grateful that they indulged a novice philosopher. This is
just one instance that demonstrates how important small acts of gener-
osity to students can be, and just how much our lives depend upon chance
and upon the kindness of others.
I went from Oberlin to Pittsburgh, where I quickly fell under the spell of
Annette Baier, who really taught me— and so many others— to read and to
love Hume. Annette opened the Treatise as a systematic unity, and showed
why it was so important to take Book II so seriously. I am always conscious
of how much of my philosophical life I owe to her patient and inspiring
teaching. The reading of Hume I offer here is enormously indebted to her
own. Indeed, virtually every specific idea I advance derives in some way
from her work. If there is anything I add here, it is simply to draw insights
together that are scattered in her work, and to give a shape to them not
explicit in her own corpus, but certainly suggested by it. So, to adopt the
scholastic language appropriate to this philosophical genre, the present
( ix )